This specification relates to communicating information, for example, distributing information in a peer-to-peer computer network.
Various approaches have been used to address the unreliability of underlying network infrastructure when distributing information over a network. For example, when sending information through the Internet using a protocol that is not guaranteed to be always reliable, such as the User Datagram Protocol (UDP), Digital Fountain Codes have been used to break up a stream into a number of sub-streams such that the original stream can be reconstructed from a minimum number of sub-streams. Thus, when a sending device is using a communications channel that can sometimes drop entire blocks of data, the receiving device can still reconstruct the original information even when some of the sub-streams are unavailable at the receiving device.
In addition, various approaches have been used to address server load concerns for media distribution over a network, where the traditional approach is to provide a large central server farm that supplies a separate stream to each client computer. For example, BitTorrent, Inc. of San Francisco, Calif., provides software that breaks up files to be transferred and delivers the files piece by piece from one or many different sources in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, where a file to be downloaded from a server to a client may actually come from another client (a “peer”) that already downloaded that file. Other P2P software includes Kazaa Software, available from Sharman Networks Ltd. of Port Vila, Vanuatu, and Octoshape Software, available from Octoshape Apps of Copenhagen, Denmark.